Paper Flowers
by marsmagari
Summary: An exiled king, a clay doll, and a spider come together in an abandoned castle sunken in mist, and seek refuge in each other from the grim, forsaken world outside. Touch is the only means to fill an empty space inside a counterfeit heart.
1. Ghost

**Author's Corner**

I honestly don't know how this happened. One day I was just hit with a huge sudden urge to write for these three, so I did, and thus, this monster was born. I'm not sure exactly how long it will be, but I have a ton of ideas so I guess we'll see how things go.

There will be multiple POV's, as well as pretty... detailed descriptions of sexual content, so if you don't like that (or this relationship), go away. Horror is also a pretty big part of this, so if you're looking for fluff, you reeally won't like this. It's very likely that this won't end in a happily ever after, so as long as you know that before going in, you'll be fine.

If you do like it and want to read more, leave a comment! Enjoy!

**(18.11.2017) Reuploaded from Archive of Our Own.**

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**PAPER FLOWERS**

**Chapter 1:** Ghost

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There was a decorum, Kikyo had found, in dying and being born-again. In being taken apart and put back together; in being obliterated and having all the pieces reform into something similar to the original, yet different. She was an enchanted doll, wandering the darkened hallways of a castle forgotten in mist. Sometimes she felt like a ghost, swallowing the souls of lamented maidens in order to keep the clockwork in her porcelain ligaments turning.

If not for the monsters that roamed the same hallways she did, she could have been the only person left in the world.

But she was not.

Her only companions were a demon king—a fallen king, rather, for his kingdom was in shambles and his people were all dead—and a spider made man, whose lust and greed had been so powerful that he too had been reborn as she had. She knew who they were, knew their names and their stories, but those things held little value now.

A memory meant nothing now.

They came to her in the night, and she often found herself unable to distinguish dream from reality in their presence.

Naraku's eyes were red and almost luminous as he loomed above her, filled with malice and desire and hatred. When he entered her, he held her hands above her head by her wrists and never tore his eyes away from hers. His thrusts were well paced and strong, and afterwards, he suckled the base of her neck, his tongue hot and lapping at her pretend flesh. He had wanted this—sold his soul to the darkness itself—for so long. So he took his time, and brought himself to climax after climax, but no matter how much he took, he could never take what he really wanted . . .

He could never make her love him.

Sesshoumaru was different. There was no long-lasting desire with him. No promises. Just quick, desperate oblivion. His face was always cast in shadow, and unlike Naraku, he never looked her in the eyes. Instead, he pulled her close, bit her throat, and fucked her into a stupor. He never tried to revitalise himself, or rise up from the ashes he was drowning in.

When he fucked her, it was like he was trying to make himself disappear.

She never spoke, just gasped and sobbed in the height of her pleasure, and then he was gone, as if he had never been there in the first place.

She was always left alone in the end.

One night, as she perched in her too-large bed waiting for them like an obedient little bird, she decided she didn't want to be a ghost anymore. She didn't want to be a plaything, or a means of simply expelling out their frustrations. She had let them take and take from her, but now she wanted something in return.

She wanted to take something _back_.

So when Naraku's shadowy silhouette materialised in the doorway, instead of waiting for him to come to her, she slid off the bed and walked towards him. His eyes trapped her, taking her moon-soaked form in, and she stopped just before him. He always looked so much smaller than she remembered. So much less threatening.

So much more like the morning after a dream, where her memories of him were vague, and gradually fading.

She supposed that was his punishment for losing the war over the jewel.

Feeling Sesshoumaru's presence near, she circled Naraku and then stopped behind him, waiting for him to turn around to face her before pushing him towards the bed. He lowered himself down so that he was sitting on the edge, and she stared down at him, her hands sliding up to brush his shoulders. He watched her, curiously, and she pushed the folds of his haori down to expose his bare upper torso. She knew Sesshoumaru was watching from somewhere in the gloom, and a tiny smile played on her lips as she leaned forward and kissed him. The kiss was feather-light, but the air was heavy, and when she pulled away, his breathing was ragged.

Not letting go of his gaze, her hands trailed down his naked chest until they came to rest on top of his thighs. Her grip was hardly crushing, but it was firm, and she held him in place as she planted another brisk kiss to his mouth. This one was harder, more demanding, and he responded by opening his mouth and flicking his tongue against her bottom lip. She moved one hand up from his thigh and pulled at the waistband of his hakama, her fingers dipping past it and across the warm flesh beneath.

Footfalls finally sounded in the doorway and she smiled against his mouth. Pulling away, she turned to glance over her shoulder and saw Sesshoumaru standing there, his youki enormous and burning.

His eyes were glazed over with dripping lust, and the corners of her mouth edged into a winning smirk.

She removed her hands from Naraku's thighs and climbed onto the bed with him. She crawled behind him and massaged her hands across his shoulders and back, her eyes still locked with Sesshoumaru's. Naraku's pulse hammered hard against her palm when she cupped his neck, and she leaned in to press a sequence of unhurried kisses to his shoulder. She could feel Sesshoumaru's desire radiating from the other end of the room, and Naraku's breathing was hoarse as she coiled her legs around him from behind and grazed his skin with her teeth.

Before she could even reach down into his hakama pants, Sesshoumaru was suddenly at the foot of the bed, towering above them both with scorching eyes.

Naraku studied him carefully, seemingly trying to calculate what he was about to do, but Kikyo simply lifted his head with his chin and then nipped the shell of his ear. Holding Sesshoumaru's gaze, her eyes flashed with dangerous boldness.

"Kiss him," she said.

Once he would have been disgusted. Once he would have killed her for even suggesting it, but that was back in a time when they still had places in this life.

Back when he was a sovereign ruling over his people. When Naraku was coveting the jewel and steadily growing in power. And when she was a simple miko, who gathered herbs, prayed in a temple, and cared for her younger sister . . . A whole world ago.

Those people were gone.

Obeying her demand, Sesshoumaru wrapped his hand around Naraku's neck and pulled him in for a harsh, unforgiving kiss. Naraku choked out a gasp as Sesshoumaru squeezed his neck, and Sesshoumaru used the opportunity to plunge his tongue into his mouth.

Heat pooled in the pit of Kikyo's stomach, and she reached forward to pull Sesshoumaru's haori away. The sound of their lips smacking together sent fire spreading through her whole terracotta body. Her nipples ached against the cloth of her kimono, sore and already erect, and she shifted farther back on the bed to grant them more room.

Sesshoumaru used the expanded space and shoved Naraku down onto the bed, climbing on top of him and still devouring his mouth. His fangs were long, she saw as he growled low against Naraku's mouth, and when he opened his eyes, the whites of them were now dark red.

They shot to hers and she felt herself freeze at the sheer brutality she saw—the animalistic haze he'd fallen under.

His true face.

_This is what a demon looks like_, she thought. _This is the creature hiding beneath the sheepskin of a man they charade around in._

Regardless . . . She was not afraid.

Dying, it seemed, had completely destroyed any mark of fear she'd had.

Unexpectedly, shrill laughter burst from Naraku's lips, and the two of them averted their focus to where he laid sprawled out in a mess beneath Sesshoumaru. The laughter was cruel—mocking. The same laughter that had haunted her dreams. But not even that scared her.

She scuttled forward and shoved three fingers into his mouth to silence him.

Sesshoumaru's monstrous face showed traces of amusement at that, before he dug his fingers into her hair and forced her head forward to seal their mouths together. The kiss was violent and demanding, and she found herself moaning into it, her fingers still stuffed tightly in Naraku's mouth.

In all their nights of passion together, he'd never kissed her before. Not once. Not a single time. His head had always remained facedown against her breasts, like he was trying to pretend she was anyone else. Trying to pretend he couldn't stop coming back to her, like a locust to a dandelion.

That wasn't the case now.

His tongue danced around hers and she felt his claws scraping against her scalp, drawing more and headier moans. He caught her bottom lip between his teeth and pulled at it, so hard that it would have drawn blood if she had any to spill.

"Undress," he rasped, then drew away and dragged Naraku up into a seating position.

Filled with wooziness and quickly growing arousal, she slipped out of her kimono and watched his hands wander to Naraku's black hakama pants with intense attentiveness. He tore through the material in a matter of seconds and took his cock in his hand, giving it a couple of hard strokes which withdrew a string of musical groans from Naraku. Kikyo watched the muscles in his back shifting as Sesshoumaru worked him, the bruise-hued spider mark shifting with every ripple as if it were alive and straining to be freed. She felt hypnotised by it, drugged into a sense of wistfulness, and she felt herself falling into a nostalgic trance . . .

The memory of a girl came to her. A girl watching the other village girls with envy as they painted their faces and rouged their lips. That girl had wanted to be like them. Had wanted it so badly. As guardian of the jewel, and village miko, a life like that had been impossible then, but now . . . Now . . .

She just wanted to feel like an ordinary girl.

As she watched her demon king and spider hiss and pleasure each other, the realisation settled that she would never be ordinary. She would never laugh with other girls, she would never marry, and she would never bear any children. Those parts of life had abandoned her. Even her own soul had abandoned her, now warm and bright within Kagome's breast, and filling her with kindness and the ability to do what Kikyo could no longer ever do . . .

_Love_.

It made her feel angry. So angry.

And sad.

She hated feeling like that.

So she demolished those deplorable cravings of her heart, and yanked Naraku's hair so hard his head shot skyward and a moan exploded from his lips. She turned his head sideways and kissed him, her breasts rubbing against his back and creating a torturous friction.

She heard a soft growling coming from the back of Sesshoumaru's throat, so she stretched out her hand, still kissing Naraku relentlessly, and pushed a finger into his mouth. She could feel his sharp canines and the vibration of his growls, until he caught her wrist with his free hand and began swirling his tongue around her finger.

The sensation caused a slickness to gather between her legs, and she rolled her hips rhythmically against the bedsheets as her stimulated sighs were swallowed by Naraku's mouth. She wanted to take and take from them until she forgot her own name, her memories, and whatever remaining purpose she had in this poisoned world. She wanted everything to fade away into obscurity, to ink on a page, to an ancient fairy tale that would be told like a secret.

Hysteria swallowed her whole.

Her lips broke away from Naraku's with a loud _smack!_ and she shoved him down onto the bed in one swift motion. She stared down at him, his skin translucent and twisting with pleasure as Sesshoumaru's hand continued to pump his cock, and his hair was fanned out all around him in dark waves of ink. Her face was a blend of madness and severity as she looked down on him, and he laughed at the sight of it.

She hated him. Hated him for tearing apart her life.

Folding her hands around his neck, she squeezed hard and breathed a feverish laugh at the choking sound he made when Sesshoumaru finally brought him to completion. She could kill him. She could kill him right there. Crush his windpipe, burn off his face with her powers, _anything_. He was completely and hopelessly at her mercy. He _deserved_ to die at her hand, but somehow, still . . . She felt her traitorous mind falling victim to the seduction.

If she killed him, that would be one less face to look at her with anything other than bitterness or pity.

Sesshoumaru would come to his senses one day. At some point, he would leave this cursed place and never come back, but Naraku wasn't that strong. No, not in the slightest.

He wasn't strong enough to break free from her.

He was the only thing that was truly and utterly hers.

He panted, skin coated with sweat, and she let go of his throat. He stared at her, still breathing deeply in the wake of his orgasm, before he shot up and grabbed her. Before she could react, he shoved her legs apart and buried his face in her cunt.

She cried out as his tongue stoked the fires inside her, and opened her eyes to peek at Sesshoumaru, whose eyes were still locked on her. They were like rubies, glowing in the dark, and she stifled a sob as he shifted closer and carefully cupped her cheeks. The stripes on his cheeks were jagged and changing, and she reached out to lightly brush her fingers along them. She never broke eye contact with him. Even when Naraku added his fingers to her dripping slit and made her gasp and tremble. She came twice from his hands alone, and Sesshoumaru kissed her again as she rode out the aftershocks of her orgasm.

She could feel it again as he did. That desperation—him trying to throw himself into the abyss that came after this world.

Perhaps he hoped she would kill him, like she'd contemplated killing Naraku just then. Perhaps he hoped she would burn all three of them, and take them away from this horrible place and into a silence they could sleep forever in.

She secretly wished that she would.

Naraku lifted his head from between her legs and smiled.

It was the smile of a murderer.

Sesshoumaru reached for him and lapped up the juices running down his chin as if it was a sweet wine. _Her_ juices. Her breathing was soft and laboured as she watched them finish each other.

Just as he had with her, Sesshoumaru clamped his teeth down on Naraku's neck and bucked into his hand. His sharp teeth pierced his flesh and blood spilt down his chest and stomach. Kikyo leaned forward and kissed down the trail of red. It painted her lips and stained her hands.

The only rouge she would ever wear.

She stroked and tasted it, feeling Sesshoumaru's claws graze the small of her back, and Naraku moaned under the fog of the many sensations. She didn't know how long they stayed like that, just touching one another, or when she started to cry. Sesshoumaru cleaned up her tears with his tongue, and she felt Naraku's hands slide between her legs again. Her makeshift heart hammered in her chest and she laid down on the bedsheets. She could have sworn there were more than two pairs of hands on her. Like the darkness of the castle itself had grown hands and was caressing her too, fucking her with its monstrous phantom fingers.

If she turned her head towards the open shoji screens, she could see the night sky, and the half-moon suspended in the centre of it.

Her Shinidamachu sailed above the rolling mist, like ghosts, and her eyelids floated closed. With every climax, she felt like she was flying with them. Like she'd grown imaginary wings and was high above all this . . . Where Naraku was only a whisper of darkness, Sesshoumaru was not a king in exile, and her heartbeat filled her with relentless warmth instead of ice. She didn't have to hide in the shadows of a lonely castle there, and her dreams weren't hollow or foolish.

Kikyo had not dreamed since her revival, but that night she did as she slept in the tangle of Naraku and Sesshoumaru's limbs. She dreamed of golden fields and flowers, blue skies and a summer breeze, and children smiling as they waited for her on the riverbank.

She dreamed of a world where she was no longer an unwanted ghost.

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	2. Shadow

**Author's Corner**

Wow! I didn't expect such a positive response to the first chapter! Thank you for the wonderful comments, you guys are incredible!

Enjoy the new chapter and don't forget to keep reviewing! I always love reading your thoughts and questions on the topic :)

**(22.11.2017) Reuploaded from Archive of Our Own.**

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**PAPER FLOWERS**

**Chapter 2:** Shadow

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Naraku awoke to an empty bed in an empty pocket of the world. No sounds drifted in through the open shoji doors, nor did any light. The acres of thick grey mist outside made quite certain of that. He felt imprisoned in the gloomy bedchambers, trapped by an invisible force which paralysed his aching body.

His flesh was covered in purple bruises and teeth marks, the most noticeable one being the colossal blemish on his shoulder that Sesshoumaru had inflicted. Angry and swollen, it was already beginning to scab, and it throbbed with a sweet incessant ache. Flecks of dried blood still remained, scattered up and down his collarbone like rose petals.

He could still feel the pressure of Kikyo's lips on his skin.

Rising from the bed, he left his clothes abandoned on the wooden floorboards and wandered out onto the engawa. The air was cold and damp, seeping into his bare skin, but it didn't feel unpleasant. He stepped out onto the grass and felt the moisture between his toes.

He couldn't detect Sesshoumaru's presence anywhere, but he could feel Kikyo stirring somewhere deep in the fog-drowned garden.

A soul gatherer broke through the silvery air above his head and sailed towards the murky silhouette of a large maple tree in the distance. He followed its path, watching it glide along a breeze like a ribbon, until he reached the tree, and saw the outline of a figure standing at its base.

Kikyo lifted her hand and one of the serpents cruised down to curl in a spiral around her arm, before settling comfortably in the palm of her hand. The glowing orb of light in its clutches floated out and into her chest, and filled her with an impression of realness. She looked like a gothic heroine, summoning ghosts and eating the tortured souls they brought. Once the collectors had finished depositing handfuls of moondust into her care, they seemed content to float around in the branches above her, and Naraku watched the incident feeling both spellbound and disgusted.

Aware of him standing there, she turned around and looked at him.

A wave of mist rolled by and temporarily obscured her face, making her look like some other-worldly apparition herself. This was the Kikyo he recognised. Supernatural. Mystic. Curious . . . Not like the creature he'd seen last night, holding him down in the peak of his pleasure and watching him finish with a madness in her gingerbread eyes.

"Shouldn't you be leaving?" she asked.

Her tone was as cold as he remembered. Not thick and gravelly like it had been when she'd whispered in his ear and brought him over the edge.

"Is that what you want?"

Her eyes were glacial as she walked towards him, stopping only an arm's length away. She did not respond. It drew more fury like a snowstorm around his heart, and he glared.

He wondered why he allowed her to do this to him—why he allowed her so much power. He had surrendered to her, completely. Whatever twisted manifestation of what could be called love he had, belonged to her. Unlike Inuyasha, he would never throw her aside or shun her for a girl who shared her face. He didn't care that she'd been born in an oven from bones and soil, he didn't even care that she _hated_ him. Yet she still regarded him with a mien like a bitter wind.

What did she _want_ from him?

"You're all alone here, Kikyo," he said, hoping to provoke her, "You're always alone. If I leave, you'll have no one."

"Even with you here, I still have no one."

His glare died somewhat, and he studied her. The sourness of her face and the quiet rage in her eyes. She reminded him of the time before a storm, when the air was prickly and full of electricity, waiting to explode. Why did she stay here, in a bygone castle so far away from any sunlight? Why did she wallow in her misery, welcoming the passage into nothing?

Hadn't she wanted to _live_?

Wasn't that the reason she'd fought against him?

This could surely not have been her endgame.

"What of your sister?"

That caused something to shift in her eyes, like a moving shadow, and she finally tore her eyes away from his. Kaede was like a thorn in her side, twisting and twisting until it pierced the core of her existence and rendered her dead and then deader.

He almost smiled at the lethal flare she radiated.

"I have brought her nothing but misery," she answered, somehow managing to keep her unbearable monotonous voice, "It is best I stay far away from her. For her sake."

"Not because she's found a better, breathing replacement for you?"

Her hand shot forward like she'd drawn a blade and made contact with his bare chest. Raw, smoking power surged out from the palm of her hand—so hot that he winced with hostile surprise—and spread out through his chest, strangling him from within. The fizz of his flesh roasting underneath her hand pierced his ears and made him stifle a pained groan.

Kagome was another thorn in her side.

One he particularly enjoyed twisting.

"Kagome could never hope to replace me," she spat, "If anything, she is a replacement for _me_, not the other way around."

"I think Inuyasha would disagree."

The intensity of her purification energy expanded against his chest and sent a blusterous pain into his heart. The heart that had lusted for her and prompted Onigumo to trade his soul to monsters, thus setting the whole, _terrible_, war into motion.

She was to blame for every awful thing that had happened.

Her and that nauseating, worthless bandit.

Hurt blazed in her eyes, likely against her intent, and she finally withdrew her hand. A sizzling scorch mark in the shape of her hand was left behind on his chest as a result of her temper. She stared at it, at the bubbling red flesh, which was already beginning to scab, and the steam rising from the wound she'd inflicted. There was no remorse in her facade, but still, she leaned close and pressed a passionless kiss to the charred stretch of skin. With his body's regenerative abilities, it would heal soon, making the action moot . . . but she did it again. And again. And again.

When she pulled away, her lips were stained pink with residue from the wound. Like petals from a peony flower. He thought of his blood rolling down her chin and lifted his hand to smear the pink past the corners of her mouth and up along her cheeks, painting an eerie, too-wide smile that fit the insanity she fell into every night.

"If I am not the superior copy," she whispered through his fingers, "Then why not simply kill me?"

"I told you. I will not kill you—"

"You will _break_ me, I know."

"That's right."

"But don't you know, Naraku? You cannot break something which never worked in the first place. I came into this world already broken beyond repair, and I will leave just the same. Nothing you do will alter that, not in the faintest. Regardless of what you think . . . You have no power over me. None at all."

He laughed, eyes narrow, and moved his fingers from her lips to cup her cheek. There was nothing tender about the action, and he touched her like a healer would touch a newly turned corpse. Her skin was soft, but cold. The magic in the craftsmanship of the sorceress who made her rendered it impossible to tell that she was moulded out of clay. She felt like a dead person. Not a cursed, living doll. Her heart didn't beat, and her blood didn't flow. Time was at a standstill for her and would remain so forever.

Thanks to him.

"But, Kikyo," he said, ". . . How do you expect to die when you don't even live?"

She stepped away from him and the mist seemed to envelop her.

Her soul gatherers coiled around her, their eyes like cerise jewels through the thickening veil of grey, and she gave him a cruel smile.

"Leave," she told him, and then she was gone.

He stood in her absence for what could have been an eternity, because turning and returning to the shadows from which he came.

As he swam through the gloom, his mind churned with memories and mourning. Of how he'd had everything all in place, only to watch it fall apart with the swing of a sword. A sword and an arrow, tearing through all he had built . . .

All he had _wanted_.

Stripped of his dreams—and perhaps worse, his _power_—he was left to the barrenness of his new reality. He was no more than flesh and abhorrence, stalking the lands and leaving poison with every stride. Unkillable. Unwritten. Unwanted. The jewel had shattered in his hands and ripped it all away, breaking into the nihility that he yearned for too.

His despair brought him to Sesshoumaru, who was digging in the dirt and surrounded by pyramids of rotting bodies.

The smell of sweat and decomposition tainted the air and clung to him like a disease.

A hole in the earth sat before Sesshoumaru, and he was steadily tossing the corpses into it like heavy sacks of grain. Each one hit the bottom with a crunching _thud!_, and Naraku was suddenly aware of the orchard of lives he himself had taken. He didn't feel guilty, he was just abruptly . . . aware. It was a peculiar epiphany, and one that was broadened by the seemingly infinite number of bodies around.

This was the portrait of a fallen kingdom.

The consequence of a king's irreversible failure.

It was what Sesshoumaru could never take back, never reverse, because he no longer possessed the healing sword he had repetitively taken for granted.

"Come to gloat my defeat?" his voice tore through the spell of rot, "Me, vanquisher of everything, master of death . . . burying the casualties from a battle I could not win. A _massacre_. All my people, dead. All but me. I am aware of the irony."

Once, Naraku would have indeed mocked him, but there was no point to it now.

Nothing from it to gain.

"How many?" he asked instead.

Sesshoumaru's expression darkened and he stopped tossing bodies.

"Two thousand. The attack came without warning. There was no time to prepare for retaliation. And now a usurper sits in my place, sending these lands spiralling into mutiny."

"What's the point of wanting a throne if there's no one left to rule over?"

"You should know. Wasn't that _your_ end plan for after you felled us?"

Creatures shifted underneath Naraku's skin and he almost balled his fists. He hadn't known what he'd wanted once the fight was over. Total power from the jewel? Kikyo? Perhaps he hadn't really wanted anything at all. Perhaps he'd simply wanted to _win_. To be remembered centuries from now in stories people would tell over cups of sake. To live forever through nightmares and unbridled fears.

Quite simply, he'd fought, because it was the only thing he knew how to do.

The thing he'd been _born_ for, out of a greedy, shrivelled heart he could never rid himself of.

"Why not deal with the usurpers, Sesshoumaru?" he asked harshly, "Why not _kill_ them? Or would you rather spend the rest of your days stumbling in self-pity and burrowing graves? I would have thought you were above such menial things. Why not stop his foolishness and _take back_ what you lost?"

Sesshoumaru turned fully to face him, his eyes already red with fury.

Naraku smiled, brutishly, and added quietly, "What? Not strong enough?"

Sesshoumaru sprung at him.

Instantly, his hands were around his throat and he shoved him against a tree. The whites of his eyes were like blood and his irises had turned ice blue. His top lip curled upward and revealed his set of razors as he snarled, and Naraku felt his eyes watering at the odour of decay that was stuck to Sesshoumaru's clothing.

He smelled like dirt and death and sorrow, and when he savagely fastened his mouth over his, he tasted like it too.

Hands still wrapped around his throat and holding him in place, Naraku choked out an unexpected moan when Sesshoumaru thrust his tongue into his mouth and drank from him. He was pouring himself into him, emptying it all out and trying to forget. It was the only thing he could think to do, Naraku realised as he sucked on his bottom lip until it was ripe and swollen like a fruit. All those nights he went to Kikyo, just like him, he was trying to rip those memories out and free himself from the coming storm. The storm of all storms, which would shred their world to pieces like a paper crane, and leave them naked and vulnerable to the monsters waiting in the void between worlds.

Naraku welcomed that destruction.

Forcing him away from the tree, Sesshoumaru shoved him to the ground and Naraku hissed with something in between pain and rapture. His hands were everywhere, squeezing, scraping, remaking him into something else. As he settled above him, Naraku arched himself up into the curve of Sesshoumaru's torso and felt his hardness pressing against his spine. He rocked against him, like a beast waiting to be taken, and Sesshoumaru grabbed him by the hips and slashed through his hakama. Whether the slickness he felt spreading across his ass was blood or sweat or even tears, Naraku didn't know, but he soon stopped caring because then Sesshoumaru was entering him and fucking him into the ground.

Every thrust was agonising and felt like he was dying, but every second he wasn't in him felt like a different kind of torture. He wheezed and cried out like someone who was being slowly murdered, but the explosions of laughter that came in between were the songs of a madman.

With a hand around his dick and a hand holding his throat, Naraku wondered what Kikyo would think if she could see them in this horrifying situation. She was responsible, after all. She had started this. Onigumo's lust was a wisp of candlelight compared to hers. She would gladly help Sesshoumaru hold him down and watch him come apart in a clearing surrounded by half-filled graves.

After a string of loud cracked moans, Sesshoumaru pumped his fist around his cock faster and his thrusts grew stronger. He leaned forward and crunched down on his shoulder again with his teeth—the same spot as last time—and Naraku came harder than he ever had in his life. Sesshoumaru rode him until he was no more than a faintly burning ember, and hot tears streamed down his cheeks from the overwhelming smell of rot and blood that encompassed them.

If he were to finally die, this would be the way he would want to go.

No glory, no victory, just pure, sickening ecstasy.

Maybe he was already dead, and this was one of the sixteen hells. Maybe Sesshoumaru, or whatever demon was wearing his face, would fuck him until he was raw and then pass him on to the rest of his wicked brethren. Then they would break him from the inside until he was no longer anything at all, just broken pieces spread across the floor, and then gather them all back up and do it over and over again. A different kind of burning, not the kind from a fire, forever.

He could hardly say he wouldn't deserve it.

So he laughed, and laughed, pinned underneath a vicious beast, and relished in every scorching touch he felt deep in the core of his ungodly soul.

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	3. Beast

**Author's Corner**

Thank you again for the wonderful comments. I really am so glad you've enjoyed this! I have no longer have any plans of extending this, so this is now the final chapter. As you might've guessed, this chapter is from Sesshoumaru's POV, completing the sad and sadder trio. Don't forget to review once you're finished!

**(5.12.2017) Reuploaded from Archive of Our Own.**

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**PAPER FLOWERS**

**Chapter 3:** Beast

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It had taken Sesshoumaru a little under seven hundred years to comprehend how one could spend a fraction of a lifetime alone and never once feel lonely, only to suddenly be hit with a profuse notion of it all at once. It was jarring, unfamiliar, _aching_. During whatever rare spells of sleep he was granted with, he found himself dreaming of the uncanny comfort of camaraderie. A twin-headed dragon. A kappa. A girl running circles around his legs with troupes of flowers woven throughout her hair. He even dreamed of a boy with a great chain sickle, swinging from tree branch to tree branch like a twirling marionette. The dreams were a consolation when he was in them, but when he was awake, they were barrels of gunpowder going off inside his brain.

He wasn't sure how to silence them.

He wasn't sure he wanted to.

He left Naraku in the clearing home to corpses and ventured back to the ghostly castle. He had buried enough of his people for today. Their pallid grey faces and sunken eyes were forever etched into his mind and he would likely never forget. The bodies filled him with enough guilt on their own, but what tormented his thoughts the most was what had become of Rin—or rather, what had _not_ become of her.

He couldn't find her.

He couldn't find her . . . _anywhere_.

Jaken and Ah-Un had disappeared too, as well as the slayer's brother. He could locate no trace of them anywhere, never minding how far he searched, and it suffocated him, not knowing whether they had made it out alive or were dust and ashes beneath his feet. At first, he had wondered if they had taken her far away as a means of keeping her safe, which reassured him for a fleeting moment. They would protect her, he knew. That was the only remaining thing he was sure of. They would do whatever needed to be done to keep her safe . . . But then why was there no trail left behind for him to follow?

It was as if they'd been lifted from the page of mortality and erased from all history. Anyone who had known them was gone. Anyone who could lead him to them.

Only he was left.

He stood on the grassy hill overlooking the castle and stared out into the mist surrounding it. He was reminded more of the ocean, pale blue waves shifting softly out into every horizon. Something moved beneath the surface, something alive, and he almost thought it looked like a dancing dragon. His eyelids grew heavy.

He was tired.

So tired.

The miko was sleeping when he found her. She was laying on her front with her head propped up with pillows, and her dark hair hugged her closely like a curse. She stirred at his presence and her eyelids floated open.

Seeing him there, she moved into a sitting position on the bed and looked at him through butterfly lashes. Her cheeks were wet with tears, indicating she'd been dreaming, and he walked towards her. He stopped at the edge of the bed and she dried her eyes with her sleeve. Normally, this would be when he would bend her over and send the two of them into an amnesia, but instead, he sank to his knees on the floor and just stared at her. After so long of not doing so, he found it strange, but there was something calming about her dark, haunted eyes. Carefully, she edged forward and threaded her fingers into his hair. The sheer fabric of her kimono had slipped away from her legs and left them exposed, so he planted his palms on her smooth thighs and closed his eyes. Then, deserting whatever he had left of his pride, he lowered his head to rest on her knee and let out a long, woeful breath.

If he couldn't slaughter his way back to the way things used to be, he decided he would happily choose to stay in an imagined reverie where they were.

She called his name. Quietly. His head rose, and she brought his hands from her thighs into her own, then she slipped down the bed and into his lap. Gently, she pushed him back onto the floor, and her hair fell forward past her shoulders like waterfalls of midnight. She brought his hands up to rest on her hips, never breaking eye contact, and slowly rocked against him. He breathed deeply, his claws pricking her kimono and following her periodic movements. At some point, her hands moved down from over his and freed him from his already torn hakama pants. She took him into her and he growled low and long like the beast he was. She stuffed her hair behind her ears and rolled her hips again, drawing yet another rumbling growl.

He never let her fuck him.

Never let her have control.

Now he wished he had many moons ago.

Still sheathed inside her like her own personal blade, he shot up into a sitting position and held his face close to hers so that their noses were touching. She gasped at the jolt of friction and steadied herself by fastening her hands onto his shoulders. He never tore his gaze away from hers, his eyes quickly darting back and forth between hers, and she balled the fabric of his haori tightly in her fists as he moved below her.

Their mouths didn't touch, despite the closeness.

He had learned that the anticipation of a kiss was often greater than the kiss itself.

She lifted herself, then slammed back down on him and ripped out a gritty hiss from his throat. She did it again, continuously, until he was panting against her lips and his eyes had tumbled closed. Her hands snaked up from his shoulders to hold his cheeks, and he felt a tremor of want rush through her as her breath came out in soft little satisfied sighs. He had her coming apart in a matter of no time, and her climax filled the air with sweetness. The smell of it caused his eyes to bleed red and he lightly grazed his fangs against her neck, wondering how it would feel if she had a throbbing heartbeat. But there was no heartbeat. No blood flow. She was as hollow on the inside as him, forgotten and lonely and full of freezing rage. His fingers tightened on her hips and she pulled at his hair, forcing his head aloft so she could kiss around the apple in his throat, drinking up its honeyed nectar . . . And for the first time, Sesshoumaru's mind was far away from his typical miserable ponderings.

Although he was sitting, she still had him pinned beneath her. He was fairly certain he could escape at any time, but the hand on his chest could also flare to life at any moment and burn its way through to his heart.

It was dangerous, the amount of power he'd given her.

He felt like an animal, caught in a trap, but at the same time, he really didn't care.

With her spare hand, she pulled his head down to rest on her breast, and her movements grew faster, stronger, bolder. Her breath came out in quick, cracked intervals, and he growled low at the base of her throat.

If she could pierce his heart, then he could just as easily sever her head with his teeth.

Almost out of nowhere, Naraku's scent manifested behind him, and he felt fingers raking down his back, peeling away his haori. He and the miko locked eyes over his shoulder and the look they shared was some crazed blend of wanting, disconnection, and anger. She carried on fucking him regardless and he felt himself slipping away into someplace he hadn't even known existed. Naraku's hands slid around his torso and squeezed his chest, shaping him into something new as he did so often with that own poison-sculpted body of his. Sesshoumaru wondered why he never tried to absorb his power like he had so many times before. He was far from the storms of anarchy he had been during the war, but surely he hadn't lost every drop of what had made him such a fearsome opponent. He couldn't be completely drained, like a fruit that had had all of the juice sucked out and was left lying on the ground to rot.

He wasn't the only one rotting away in the dirt.

"Kiss him," the miko rasped, her hand crawling up to wrap around his throat and angle his head towards Naraku. _Kiss him_. Those two terrible words that had started it all.

He wasn't about to defy her.

The kiss was virtually a bite and Naraku let out a muffled cry as his lower lip was taken under siege by Sesshoumaru's teeth. Blood spilt out from the pinpricks made by his fangs and he lapped it up greedily, like a man who was dying of thirst. Naraku held his head firmly and kissed him back, oblivious to the taste of his own blood and driven by a hunger for something else. He shoved a hand around his own dick and pumped at it, still kissing him, and Sesshoumaru roared at the feeling of his own length still buried inside the miko's warm cunt. Curiously, it was the only part of her that was still warm.

She rocked against him, both hands on his front now, and her eyes took in Naraku, beating himself off to little more than a single kiss.

She started to laugh. Low, and deep, in the back of her throat. There was something of Naraku in it, Sesshoumaru had to admit, and she continued to laugh as she reached the pinnacle of her lust. The sound hypnotised him, pulling him under, and he was perfectly content to drown.

They were drowning, all three of them, and they weren't even trying to swim because why would they when there was no land above the surface? No sanctuary. No hope. Nowhere to belong. Nothing but dark, unforgiving ocean without limit. A bottomless shadow stretching out forever.

At least when they were sinking, they were together.

Just as he was about to reach the bottom, she grabbed him by the chin and startled him with the vigour in her eyes. "_No_," she said, and got up. Angry and confused, he moved to grab her hand, but was stopped when she pushed him down onto his back. Naraku stared with a puzzled frown of his own, and she turned to him. She wiped the blood off his lips and took his hands. Sesshoumaru watched her weave her fingers through his and guide them up to her breasts. Naraku held them carefully at first, but then his motions turned rougher. He rolled her nipples between his fingers and pressed his lips to her throat, leaving smudged pink marks on her skin, like love bites.

The answers were in her eyes when she caught his gaze as it was happening, and then he understood.

There was no 'together' when it came to them.

The three of them, they might have been drowning, but there was no solace in the fact that they weren't alone in it.

Whatever temporary consolation he'd found in thinking so had been exactly that—_temporary_.

There was no kindness in her when she leaned down and closed her mouth around him. No comfort. No love. There was only darkness and an ocean destined to swallow him. Nothing could survive him. Not a kingdom, not a father; not a little girl who smiled at him even with a face covered in bruises. He could never forget that, no matter how much he wanted to.

Never.

With water clogging his lungs, he started to laugh too. He laughed until tears streamed from his eyes and down past the stripes on his cheeks. Naraku's tongue drank them up and he cradled his face in his hands. Too uncharacteristically gentle for the creature that had tried to murder him on more than too many occasions to count.

Sesshoumaru opened his eyes and saw two red ones looking down at him, dripping with malice and . . . sorrow. The same sorrow as him.

He didn't even know if a monster like Naraku could feel sorrow.

"Go on," he said, looming above him like the aftermath of a nightmare. "It's okay, Sesshoumaru. Go on."

There was mockery in his voice, but there was loneliness too. It made him want to shoot his hand up into his chest and rip out his heart, but he wasn't sure he had a heart either. Not a real one, anyway, with proper feelings such as sorrow or loneliness. Whatever was left of it had to grey and pallid, barely still beating, and empty like the deserts he had wandered whilst searching for Rin.

_It's okay._

_Go on._

But deep down in his own hollow heart, Sesshoumaru knew it would never be okay again.

So, taking that as permission . . . He drowned.

.

.


End file.
